Manganese disulfide-silicon dioxide nano-material: Synthesis, characterization, photocatalytic, antioxidant and antimicrobial studies

The sol-gel/ultrasonically rout produced the novel MnS2-SiO2 nano-hetero-photocatalysts with the various ratio of MnS2. Prepared nano-catalyst were investigated in the photo-degradation of methylene blue under UV light illumination. Structural and optical attributes of as-prepared nano-catalysts were evaluated by X-ray diffraction and photoelectron spectroscopy. The morphological were studied by scanning electron microscopy-EDS, and dynamic light scattering. The diffuse reflectance spectroscopy was applied to examine the band gap energy. The Eg values of SiO2, MnS2-SiO2–0, MnS2-SiO2–1, and MnS2-SiO2–2 nanocomposites are 6.51, 3.85, 3.17, and 2.67 eV, respectively. The particle size of the SiO2 and MnS2-SiO2–1 nanocomposites were 100.0, and 65.0 nm, respectively. The crystallite size values of MnS2-SiO2–1 were 52.21 nm, and 2.9 eV, respectively. MnS2-SiO2 nano-photocatalyst was recognized as the optimum sample by degrading 96.1% of methylene blue from water. Moreover, the influence of pH of the solution, and contact time as decisive factors on the photo-degradation activity were investigated in this project. The optimum data for pH and time were found 9 and 60 min, respectively. The photo-degradation capacity of MnS2-SiO2–2 is improved (96.1%) due to the low band gap was found from UV–vis DRS. The antimicrobial data of MnS2-SiO2 were studied and demonstrated that the MnS2-SiO2 has fungicidal and bactericidal attributes. •The SiO2 and MnS2-SiO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by sol-gel/sonochemical method.•Photocatalyst was developed for degradation of MB.•The photo-degradation activity of MnS2-SiO2 was higher than other samples.•The MnS2-SiO2 shows the great antimicrobial and antioxidant activities.